


i can't get down any farther

by americandy



Category: The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: M/M, edgar allen poe allusions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 08:29:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americandy/pseuds/americandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>nick asks a question and the answer he receives is less than desirable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i can't get down any farther

"why do you deny that which is inevitable?”

this was the question nick absolutely needed jay to answer. an answer to this question held within it an answer to all of the others. his hopes could be dashed or confirmed with any kind of response. however, jay had never been in the business of giving nick what he wanted.

when nick wanted something, wanted to meet him halfway, jay would never quite reach him. he’d be one fourth of the way there and nick would overextend to suit him and that is how they operated day after day after day.

believe it or not, this way of living was not something nick had aspired to. when he met jay, he was marked. crisp suits, wide smiles, and endless champagne afternoons cut the skin of his soul and made it bleed. and it bled, and bled, in a glorious way.

there were the times during which nick was the focus of jay’s attention. there are no words that can be strung together to describe the elation — one afternoon nick had laid on a great ox-blood colored towel by the side of jay’s beautiful pool, by jay’s beautiful side, and nick’s hand had glanced his, and then jay grabbed his hand quite decidedly, and they just laid like that for a while — nick hasn’t created the turns of phrase appropriate enough to convey his sentiments. 

when things went dark, when things went daisy… nick felt evil about life. she would never give him what he wanted. she couldn’t, she’d been told what to do and how to feel since the dawn of her existence. poor daisy, a victim of her circumstances, a doll-child in the hands of an atrocity named tom. poor gatsby, a man in love with a pale imitation of a living girl. it was during these times that his bleeding soul subsided and a scar formed.

on the evening nick posed the question to gatsby, he’d contextualized it within his own situation: it was inevitable that jay would come to him, realize that he could be everything daisy couldn’t. the pieces of the puzzle that they were existed, they just weren’t in place.

gatsby had contextualized it in different terms.

"i know she’ll tire of me, nick. misdirection, interruption, and chaos. these are the concepts i introduce into her life. i know this, yet i can’t help myself. i don’t deny the inevitable, i choose to ignore it."

nick’s mind reached deep within itself, oddly enough, to a story he’d read by edgar allen poe. the casque of amontillado. vividly remembering the nobleman, fortunado, being shut up in that space, brick by brick — nick felt like he too was being trapped. trapped behind a wall of emotion only he would know. only he would ever know. 

gatsby reaches for him sometimes, and nick lets himself be reached for. he smiles at jay with blank eyes. behind the wall, fortunado had nothing but wine. nick counts himself lucky because he has gin.


End file.
